December 18, 2009 -- New York Times (NY)

Hired By US Customs, But Working For The Cartels

By Randal C. Archibold

SAN DIEGO -- At first, Luis F. Alarid seemed well on his way
to becoming a customs agency success story. He had risen from
a childhood of poverty and foster homes, some of them abusive,
earned praise and commendations while serving in the Army and
the Marines, including two tours in Iraq, and returned to Southern
California to fulfill a goal of serving in law enforcement.

But, early last year, after just a few months as a customs
inspector, he was waving in trucks from Mexico carrying loads
of marijuana and illegal immigrants. He pocketed some $200,000
in cash that paid for, as far as the government could tell, a
$15,000 motorcycle, flat-screen televisions, a laptop computer
and more.

Some investigators believe that Mr. Alarid, 32, who was paid
off by a Mexican smuggling crew that included several members
of his family, intended to work for smugglers all along. At one
point, Mr. Alarid, who was sentenced to seven years in federal
prison in February, told investigators that he had researched
just how much prison time he might get for his crimes and believed,
as investigators later reported, that he could do it "standing
on his head."

Mr. Alarid's case is not the only one that has law enforcement
officials worried that Mexican traffickers -- facing beefed-up
security on the border that now includes miles of new fencing,
floodlights, drones, motion sensors and cameras -- have stepped
up their efforts to corrupt the border police.

They research potential targets, anticorruption investigators
said, exploiting the cross-border clans and relationships that
define the region, offering money, sex, whatever it takes. But,
with the border police in the midst of a hiring boom, law enforcement
officers believe that traffickers are pulling out the stops,
even soliciting some of their own operatives to apply for jobs.

"In some ways," said Keith Slotter, the agent in
charge of the F.B.I.'s San Diego office, "it's like the
old spy game between the old Soviet Union and the U.S. -- trying
to compromise each other's spies."

James Tomsheck, the assistant commissioner for internal affairs
at Customs and Border Protection, and other investigators said
they had seen many signs that the drug organizations were making
a concerted effort to infiltrate the ranks.

"We are very concerned," Mr. Tomsheck said. "There
have been verifiable instances where people were directed to
C.B.P. to apply for positions only for the purpose of enhancing
the goals of criminal organizations. They had been selected because
they had no criminal record; a background investigation would
not develop derogatory information."

During a federal trial of a recently hired Border Patrol agent
this year, one drug trafficker with ties to organized crime in
Mexico described how he had enticed the agent, a close friend
from high school in Del Rio, Tex., who was entering the training
academy, to join his crew smuggling tons of marijuana into Texas.

The agent, Raquel Esquivel, 25, was sentenced to 15 years
in prison last week for tipping smugglers on where border guards
were and suggesting how they could avoid getting caught.

The smuggler, Diego Esquivel, who is not related to the agent,
said he told her that her decision to enter the academy was a
good career move and, he said, "I thought it was good for
me, too."

Under the Bush administration, the United States has spent
billions of dollars -- $11 billion this year alone for Customs
and Border Protection -- to tighten the border between the United
States and Mexico, building up physical barriers and going on
a hiring spree to develop the nation's largest law enforcement
agency to patrol the area.

But the battle for survival among cartels in Mexico, in which
thousands of people, mostly in the drug trade or fighting it,
have been killed, has only led drug traffickers to redouble their
efforts to get their drugs to market in the United States.

Along the border, many residents have family members on both
sides. Generations of residents have been accustomed to passing
back and forth relatively freely, often daily, and exchanging
goods, legal or not.

Federal officials believe that drug traffickers are seeking
to exploit those ties more than ever, urging family and friends
on the American side to take advantage of the hiring rush for
customs agents. The majority of agents and officers stay out
of crime. But smuggling can be appealing. The average officer
makes $70,000 a year, a sum that can be dwarfed by what smugglers
pay to get just a few trucks full of drugs into the United States.

Right now, only a fraction -- 10 percent or so -- of Customs
and Border Protection recruits are given a polygraph screening
that federal investigators say has proved effective in weeding
out people with drug ties and other troublesome backgrounds.
Officials say they do not have the money to test more recruits.

In years past, new hires rarely served in the areas where
they had grown up, but recently that practice has been relaxed
somewhat to attract more recruits, said Thomas Frost, an assistant
inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr.
Frost and other internal affairs veterans say that has made it
easier for traffickers.

Mr. Tomsheck said that several prospective hires had been
turned away after investigators suspected that they had been
directed to Customs and Border Enforcement by drug trafficking
organizations, and that several recent hires were under investigation
as well, though he declined to provide details.

As one exasperated investigator at the border put it, "There
is so much hiring; if you have a warm body and pulse, you have
a job."

The F.B.I. is planning to add three multiagency corruption
squads to the 10 already on the Southwest border, and the Department
of Homeland Security's inspector general, the department's primary
investigative arm, has also added agents. But such hiring has
not kept up with the growth of the agency they are entrusted
to keep watch over.

Over all, arrests of Customs and Border Protection agents
and officers have increased 40 percent in the last few years,
outpacing the 24 percent growth in the agency itself, according
to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general's office.
The office has 400 open investigations, each often spanning a
few years or more.

Keith A. Byers, who supervises the F.B.I.'s border corruption
units, said corruption posed a national security threat because
guards seldom verify what is in the vehicles they have agreed
to let pass, raising concerns "they could be letting something
much more dangerous into the U.S."

Most corrupt officers gravitate to smuggling illegal immigrants,
rationalizing that is less onerous than getting involved with
drugs, investigators say.

But Mr. Byers and others point to a string of drug-related
cases that make them wonder if the conventional wisdom is holding.

Margarita Crispin, a former customs inspector in El Paso,
pleaded guilty in April 2008 and received a 20-year prison sentence
in what the F.B.I. considers one of the more egregious corruption
cases.

Through a succession of boyfriends and other associates with
ties to major drug trafficking organizations in Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico, Ms. Crispin helped smuggle thousands of pounds of marijuana
over three years, almost from the time she began working for
the agency.

She waved off drug-sniffing dogs in her lane, complaining
she was afraid of them, although investigators later learned
she had had dogs as pets.

"She is someone who from the beginning said this would
be a good job to help the people I am associated with,"
Mr. Byers said.

Just last month, Martha Garnica, a 12-year Customs and Border
Protection employee near El Paso, was charged with bribery and
marijuana smuggling in concert with traffickers in Ciudad Juarez.

Ms. Garnica's 21-year-old daughter had also sought a job with
the Border Patrol, in what investigators deemed a suspicious
move given her mother's alleged involvement in the drug trade.
The daughter, testifying in court last week, admitted she had
lied on the application both about being a United States citizen
and about owning property in Mexico. A spokesman for the United
States Attorney's Office in El Paso declined to comment.

Mr. Alarid's history in the military probably made him seem
like a good candidate for the customs job. But he had a tangled
family history. According to court papers, both his parents were
drug addicts.

Mr. Alarid was born in Tijuana, Mexico, but raised largely
in foster homes in Southern California. He emerged from high
school a track star and, over the next 10 years, did stints in
the Marines and the Army, drawing praise from commanders for
his dedication and service.

"I would willingly trust Luis with my life," Sgt.
Maj. Michael W. Abbey of the Army wrote in a letter to the judge
before Mr. Alarid was sentenced in February.

Mr. Alarid began working at the border in San Diego in October
2007. In his guilty plea, he admitted that he had started smuggling
in February 2008. He was arrested three months later.

Mr. Alarid would wave in vehicles that should have raised
suspicion, either because their license plates were partly covered
or because the plates did not belong to the vehicle, something
he would have seen on the computer screen in his inspection booth.

Before reporting to his lane, he would go out to the employee
parking lot to use his cellphone, which federal agents believe
was his way of telling the smugglers which lane to approach.

At his sentencing, all involved -- the prosecutors, the judge,
his lawyer -- expressed bewilderment at the turn in Mr. Alarid's
life. But in an interview, a family member who was not part of
the case said Mr. Alarid had mounting gambling debts and, despite
it all, had always sought a bond with his biological mother.

"I do think that the public, for a while at least, needs
to be assured that who we have at the border are 100 percent
individuals of integrity," she said. "I think you were
at one time. I don't know what went wrong for you, sir, and I
hope that you attain that again."

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